


Ripple

by saizoswifey



Category: SLBP - Fandom, Samurai Love Ballad Party - Fandom, Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY, 天下統一恋の乱 | Sakura Amidst Chaos | Samurai Love Ballad (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Love, Pining, cuteness, very brief blood mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 18:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14836658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saizoswifey/pseuds/saizoswifey
Summary: I really love how much Sanada Masayuki loved his wife, even after she has long since passed away. I wanted to write about how they first met, seeing as she was a commoner, and how their affections grew. So step on in here for a glimpse of papa Sanada in his younger days, haha.





	Ripple

     The first moment he saw her he was captured, bound by her for all her brilliance. The most peaceful conquest he would ever come across in sum; for there was no resistance, no ounce of hostility to be found at her sudden presence in his heart. She peeked out at him from underneath long lashes, eyelids pulled up from the cluster of garden flowers she had been tending to. Her eyes looked like rain felt, he thought. And no sooner had the vibrancy of her innocent smile thrummed and carried him onto some distal plane had he felt the hilt of a wooden sword plunge deep into his gut, knocking him back into reality and causing him to double over.

     “Aha! That’s your head, Masayuki!” Hideo, his sparring partner, and friend, boasted.

     Masayuki squared his broad shoulders just so. His youthful, handsome brow knitting itself as he regained his stance. He looked much like a hawk observing its prey. Hideo could see he was about to pay for that blow tenfold when Masayuki’s hands began to wring themselves on his own hilt, and he dug his heels into the rich soil below. But if anyone had been looking in Masayuki’s sharp eyes, they would have seen them fixed on the girl in the gardens just behind Hideo, until the last bit of her, and her hem, disappeared around a corner. The heavy  _thwack_  of his blow echoing in the air, as if he willed the sound to chase after her.

________

     When next he saw her, he and Hideo had been sharing _sake_ on the veranda as the sun set. The airy music of a bamboo flute chased itself through the castle. And when he looked to his left she was there, taking cloth to the boards of the floor, pausing once to bring a delicate wrist across the porcelain skin of her forehead in an effort to wipe the moisture brought on by a days work. At first, the tone that rose from the instrument had been melancholy. The sound of heartbreak or a lover’s tearful sobs of sorrow. Now, the notes were fanciful, pouring out of the hall. It seemed to dance around her figure, as if the flutist were telling her story for him. Masayuki watched the curve of her spine round itself, only to dip once more, up and down and up again with the swipe of cloth.

     Each new sweet sip from his cup seemed heavier. But it still could not soothe this wanton aching in his chest. And when her refined jaw pulled up towards him, air jammed in Masayuki’s throat. Certainly, she was just as beautiful—no, more—than he had remembered. Even the soft veil of his fantasies had lifted at the moment their gaze now met, the wistful figures hidden in desires fog no match for this woman before him. It was as if her being, her soft features, had been inked by the loose wrist and skilled brush of the most practiced calligrapher.

     Masayuki had sharp features envied by men and desired by women. He was not unaware of this fact. But for the first time, as he watched her petal lips flutter under his attentions and pull at the corners, did he find this desire to capture someone for himself.

________

     He was aware he had been following her. But an old atavism, perhaps instincts learned from the battlefield, had been screaming at him to forge onward. And he felt it his duty as a man to make sure no harm came to her while she wandered on her own. He caught a glimmer of a female figure through the trees. Like a vision of the forest. He was desperate to know the true nature of this woman he had fallen in love with.

     “So you did follow me,” she stood to face him, a playful and light inflection to her words. Her movements were slow and mincing, wildflowers flourished in her closed fists.

     Her hair flowed like ink down her shoulders, shimmering on occasion in the golden light of the sun. Flowers, Masayuki noted. She always seemed to be around them. And never in his life had he inwardly cursed himself for knowing more of weapons and strategies than what horses and men alike trotted over on their path to bloodshed, until this moment.  

     He felt foolish. He knew he looked foolish, for a moment at least. The tall and strong and capable soldier he was, with words caught in his throat and unexpected heat flashing on his cheeks. The noble Sanada’s son finally brought to his knees, not by sword but by the cutting pulchritude of a woman. He must have looked rather boyish in befuddlement as soon as he heard her speak. Quite unlike him. But the astonishment of finally hearing  _her_  voice had left him strangely unguarded.

     He couldn’t stop himself from looking at those eyes of hers, startling in their brilliant blue, and wild like a rolling river. He was a mountain but she was water, carving through his hard exterior, seemingly wearing him down and forging a path wherever she liked. And he knew then, she would always run right through him, it was fated. Surely.

     “I did,” he grinned. He was full of that familiar confidence again, cocksure expression but insouciance dripping from his every word. “You wanted me to.”

     And she did.

     She took a few steps now, further away from him, and he watched her back as she wound herself between the thin trees. They were small steps, but still, not the steps of a graceful lady. Not the steps of someone of noble birth. But he didn’t care. In fact, he preferred it. They held a sort of natural grace, and all the more beautiful for it.  

     “I said no such thing,” she replied, looking back at him quickly with a coy smile. A lilt to her words and even her very expression.

     Something about her vibrancy and femininity was not terrestrial, he was sure of it. She turned her front to him again, this time taking slow and measured steps backward as he followed her. There was not a sound but the snapping of twigs beneath them. The crunch of dead leaves. It seemed like a dance. And her slender fingers plucked at the petals of the flowers in her hand. White, and purple, and pinks. She tossed them onto the forest floor like she was lighting his path to her, and he cocked a brow while continuing his slow chase. It was in that moment he must have realized what love was. To always be chasing. But he didn’t mind, as long as it was her at the end.

________

     Masayuki had asked her to take a late night walk through the gardens with him. As they walked he regarded her features, her silhouette against the distant hazy orange glow of oil lamps lit in various rooms. She had the graceful beauty of a willow in moonlight.

     “ _Sumire,_ ” he mentioned to flowers in passing. They were purple and rather small, concentrated in color towards the middle and fading at the ends. Like a blotch of wet ink, or a drop of blood— _no_ …perhaps the fading glow of the sun behind storm clouds. He was sure he had memorized the name correctly for her.

     “That’s right,” she squeezed his hand lightly. And then she was pulling him by the sleeve towards a bush just up ahead, an attractive vibrancy emanating from her movements and seeping into him.

     They stood still for a moment. “Hmm, I don’t quite remember…” he held his chin in his hand. Pensive. Knowing the name full well but allowing his playful nature to come forth in this feigned pondering.  

     “You’re cruel,” she laughed, it was the sound of a quiet babbling river over a rock bed or the chime of thin glass. And she reached to pluck one of the flowers for him, only to wince once it was in her grasp, drawing her hand back in a jump.

     “Let me see,” Masayuki grabbed her wrist.

     A tiny bead of red emerged from her fingertip. He released the blooming stem from her grasp and slowly brought her finger to his lips, pulling it into his mouth and easing the ache with his tongue. It wasn’t blood he tasted, but water.

     Something broke within him, a breach of his soul that allowed her to burst forth when he saw her sharp intake of breath. Her torrent streaming through him and overflowing, and he half expected to see the water pooled at their feet, washes of waves carrying them somewhere, anywhere. He pulled the finger from his mouth and planted a few,  _he wasn’t sure how many,_ kisses down her palm and the length of her exposed wrist. Careful to be slow in the process. Before looking up into her eyes.

     “I remember now,” he said to her at last. His voice was low, deep and just as handsome as his face and rugged form. “ _Quince_ …Enticement, fertility, love, life.” Between each word, he had placed a hungry kiss on her soft skin.

     At some point, the stem had fallen to the ground, unnoticed by either of them.

     “Yes, that’s…”

     She had meant to say it was correct, but now Masayuki’s hand was on her cheek, his forehead pressed against hers, and his nose brushing up tenderly to the bridge of her own. And not a moment enough for a charged breath after were his lips on hers. His kiss was not greedy. Nor was it hasty. He kissed her with such affection, and in an effort to accept him, she ran her hands up the length of his arms and drew him nearer, hooking around his neck. For the rest of the evening, and for the first time, they paid no mind to anything else, lost only in the pleasant trance of one another.


End file.
